Book Review: When to Rob a Bank
When Freakonomics first came out in 2005, it seemed like everyone & their grandma read it. When I first read it a few years later as a high schooler, I had never really thought about economics, or “economist-like” thinking. Naturally, the book left a big impression on me due to the style of thinking and also providing some interesting data on trends that one had maybe peripherally noticed.
Anyway, I was in a book shop before some travel and this caught my eye - I was looking for some light reading for the flight, and this seemed perfect. It’s a collection of blog posts from the Freakonomics blog (which I don’t peruse) so this was all fresh, bite-sized content. Each story was no longer than 3 pages, and most were shorter than that. This made it nicely consumable for my commute to work, since I could read a few stories without getting too ingested into a story.
Some of my favorites below:
- Want to Fix New York Air Congestion? Shut Down LaGuardia - addition by subtraction!
- An Alternative to Democracy? - an interesting priority voting scheme. Would it ever work? Who knows!
- Would Paying Politicians More Attract Better Politicians? - likely hard to find supporters of this cause
- Beat This Aptonym - dad jokes in proper name form
- Planned Parenthood gets Freaky - creative ways to protest protests
- What Captain Sullenberger Meant to Say (But Was Too Polite to Do So) - the argument against ULCCs
- And the New Six-Word Motto for the U.S. Is… - deprecating patriotic wordplay
- How to Cheat the Mumbai Train System - insurance systems for law breakers
- Is the Endangered Species Act bad for endangered species? - unintended consequences
- I almost got sent to Guantanamo - Should’ve had Freebird
- Pirate Economics 101 - pirates as economics actors
- Economics of Street Charity - various answers from various backgrounds
- Why Are Women So Unhappy? - historical impact on today’s conclusions
- What’s the Best Advice You Ever Got? - a nice story, and a cooler idea
